While contemplating the better days when pockets of Pasco are no longer plagued by private utilities and their privateer owners, these other half-formed opinions:
MIXED EMOTIONS SHOULD greet passage of a bill that would require kids younger than 9 or shorter than 57 inches to occupy booster seats while passengers in motor vehicles. This, clearly, is a ticklish governmental reach inside the family sedan, van or SUV. And, flashing a Libertarian streak, Gov. Jeb Bush has hinted at a veto.
On the other hand, the Legislature's heart is in the right place, as one recent example suggests.
How much less horrific would the Saturday crash on State Road 54 have been if the two youngsters in Bhaum Patel's ill-fated Nissan had been properly belted in boosters? Six-year-old Janki Patel wound up crumpled under the driver's seat; her 8-year-old brother, Parth, flew into the dashboard.
Neither, the highway patrol believes, was restrained.
Parth, marginally luckier than Janki (both lost their mom, Kirtaban, 38), was treated and released. Janki, hauled from the car understandably shocked and hysterical, remained in All Children's Hospital's surgical intensive care unit Monday.
While our hearts ache for the tragedy that zeroed in on this Orlando family, we are reminded that parents make decisions regarding the safety of their children whenever they back out of the driveway. Do we need the state to tell us how to proceed? Apparently, some of us do.
Either way, volunteers expert on passenger compartment safety for kids will be at the Port Richey Toys R Us (6233 Tacoma Drive) from 10 a.m to 2 p.m. Saturday inspecting car seats, and offering advice on the proper use of adult restraints for youngsters.
CONSIDERING THAT IT'S never too early to begin constituent service, voters along the probable southern border of a future state senate seat are free to judge likely candidate Mike Fasano's activities regarding the solution to a dangerous intersection where County Line Road and Collier Parkway don't quite meet at Livingston Avenue.
As House majority leader, Fasano, whose district stops shy of this tribute to inter-county conflict, has the state Department of Transportation on speed dial. And DOT does listen, as suggested by its willingness - once Fasano got involved - to redesign the driveway for First United Methodist Church of Land O' Lakes as part of its U.S. 41 widening project.
Pasco commissioners have requested a $350,000 grant from DOT to put toward a thoughtful, million-dollar fix. If approved, the county would straighten the junction and create a cul- de-sac from what is now the end of County Line Road; residents along that strip, which began as a rural road-to-nowhere, have long suffered from lax enforcement of speed laws and prohibitions against large trucks.
If DOT performs as hoped, and Fasano's fingerprints can be detected upon the deed, the probable future state senate candidate for all of Pasco County will find himself much favored in thriving subdivisions such as Willow Bend, Turtle Lakes, Woodridge and even distant Meadow Pointe, residents of which are often held nervously captive by that ill-conceived dogleg.
SPEAKING FOR FATHERS everywhere, let me just say this about 17-year-old Holly Self's alignment with 23-year-old Lawrence Joey Smith, for 20 months a suspected killer, now convicted: What, all the honor students in her class were taken?
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